


Whistle Past the Graveyard

by omnishambles



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Prison, homoerotic compartmentalising, implied Morse/Bixby, period typical never-discussing-emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 13:38:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18575572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omnishambles/pseuds/omnishambles
Summary: The mental image of Morse sitting at one of those visiting tables in his grey uniform, looking ill the way people look when they aren't used to the food, it feels like an affront. To Morse, to his – whatever. Dignity. Prissiness. Whatever you want to call it. Jakes can't imagine Morse wanting to be seen like that, and certainly not by him. Obviously he isn’t going to go.Set after 2x04, Neverland.





	Whistle Past the Graveyard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ailcia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailcia/gifts), [equestrianstatue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/equestrianstatue/gifts).



> This takes place mainly between 2x04, Neverland, and 3x01, Ride. Title comes from an interview with show-runner/writer Russell Lewis. Asked if Blenheim Vale was 'always part of [Jakes's] backstory or created especially for Neverland', he replied, 'I always knew some part of Jakes was whistling past the graveyard.'

“Are you gonna write to him?” asks Strange. He’s holding a too-small cup and saucer, they look like a child’s tea set in his hands.

Jakes composes his face. “Sorry?” he says, like he doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

“Morse.”

Of course he’s been wondering, but Jakes can’t imagine what he’d say. Sorry springs to mind. _Sorry I didn't come. Sorry I couldn't come with you._ What do people write in prison letters anyway? _We all miss you at suppertimes and Aunty Nora sends her special love…_ They’re for family, prison letters are for family.

“Dunno,” he shrugs. “You?”

“Dunno,” says Strange.

Jakes wouldn’t know where to start with a letter. Nor would Morse for that matter. Say he’d actually mailed the soft nonsense he came out with last night (sat at his desk late, _burning the midnight Peter?_ , sure - once, twice, a third go before he gave up and tossed all the unfinished letters into the bin with a lit match) – well, he can’t even picture Morse reading it. Better for both of them if Jakes leaves well alone.

“I just want him to feel like we’re doing something,” Strange says. “Like we've not forgotten.”

“That’s nice, Jim. You could say that in a letter.”

“Maybe. Who’s reading them though? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“Yeah,” says Jakes slowly, like he could care less if it writing to Morse knocked his career prospects. Like he’d want a leg-up from the men responsible for all this anyway.

‘Conspiracy’ is a big word, but the prospect that he’s working day after day with men who knew what was done to them, who had a part in covering up Blenheim, maybe even a big part – well, Jakes is trying not to think about it. But ever since it all came out, he’s dreamt every night about that girl, Angela, putting a knife in her boss, vivid as if he was there.

“Anyway, we’ll see,” says Strange. He nods, holds up his cup and saucer like a salute and drifts away from Jakes’s desk.

Jakes lights another cigarette off the one he’s been smoking, takes a drag, feels the smoke curl in his chest. He's smoked too many today, too too many, but at least it’s taking his mind off his hangover. He’s been drinking too much all week, doesn’t know what else to do. They’re here somewhere, maybe in this building: the men who covered everything up. Who made it all go away. Maybe the same men who kept Blenheim running all those years - what’s happened to Morse is proof enough, they’re here and they’re powerful. And is this what the rest of Jakes’s life is gonna be like? Looking about him, looking at these men, nice cars, soft handshakes, senior officers, and wondering if they knew?

+

He cries off work the next afternoon and goes to Angela’s funeral. Bit of a whim. He gets there just before it starts, has a row to himself at the back. He hadn’t recognised her at the time, but he remembers her now, slightly - the eleven-year-old’s face mixed with the adult woman he saw briefly, a secretary, thought she was familiar but couldn’t place her. He remembers her now, of course. She was gentle. Patient with him. He was smaller than the others, he used to take on, cry.

It’s a well-attended funeral all things considered, ‘all things’ being that she stabbed her boss and shot herself. Well, fair enough. Jakes leaves before the end, doesn’t want to see or speak to anyone who might remember him.

That night, he dreams about her again - but the way he knew her before, a serious-faced child. And then in the way of dreams it stops being Angela and becomes a girl he knew before Blenheim, back at the children’s home. Sarah. 

Ever such a neat girl, long russet plait down her back and never a hair out of place, like she'd just tipped up for the day and was waiting for someone to collect her. Prissy, that’s the word. He was too young to know what he meant by any of it, but Jakes never could stop needling her – teasing, poking, pigtail-pulling, childish nonsense. But she was impervious, rose above it. And after four months of getting nowhere, not even the slightest dent in her sangfroid (not that he knew the word sangfroid at the time, he was nine), Jakes couldn't stand it any longer, he put a lit match to the end of her plait.

The flames moved so fast they nearly took the hair right off her head. He hadn't expected it, hadn't expected the speed of it. And that was the straw that broke the camel's in him being sent away, _unmanageable_ , they packed his bags for Blenheim only a week later.

"I put it out," he'd said plaintively, watching as Mrs Bodry rolled his pyjamas up with his toothbrush inside. "I didn't mean to hurt her."

He actually saw Sarah again, years later - he would've been about 22, new on the force, spotted her serving in a shop, one of the posh ones in town. He remembered her through a haze as a sort of first crush and was so shocked to see her he’d stepped backwards, knocked a glass off a shelf. Expensive-looking too. The sound of it smashing was incriminatingly loud, but Jakes was out on the street before he even knew what he'd done. Good reflexes. Always had them.

Anyway, it’s her he dreams about the night of Angela’s funeral, her voice thick with tears and shock: "Miss! Miss! Pete's set me on fire!" That moment is there in the dream, smell of burned hair in his nostrils, gripping her plait to stop the fire climbing. He'd burnt his hands. When he wakes up, he can feel the ghost of the pain in his palms.

+

The next day, Jakes spends too long looking at Morse’s empty desk. He feels like it’s watching him, which is stupid. He wonders if there’s anywhere else he can sit and work. He wonders if going in to visit might be better than trying to write a letter.

Jakes wishes he wasn’t still thinking about this. Doing nothing feels absurd but so does doing anything at all. The mental image of Morse sitting at one of those visiting tables in his grey uniform, looking ill the way people look when they aren't used to the food, it feels like an affront. To Morse, to his – whatever. Dignity. Prissiness. Whatever you want to call it. Jakes can't imagine Morse wanting to be seen like that, and certainly not by him. Obviously he isn't going to go.

+

Some old bird in secretarial sends a card round for Inspector Thursday, pale pink, bunch of tulips on the front. Doesn’t seem quite the right tone, bit girly, but it’s a nice thought. Jakes looks at it for ages, trying to think of the right thing to say, but nothing comes, and after a while he can feel Strange hovering about, waiting for his turn.

Nettled, he writes simply, 'Get well soon - Jakes,' and feels cross with himself for the rest of the day.

He’s always liked Thursday. A man worth respecting: comfortable in his skin, even-handed, sincere. After a lifetime of disappointing father figures (and worse than that, of course, much worse) it was a relief to find some kind of standard to hold people to, something that in a way he'd been looking for, in homes and schools and national service, all his life.

The first case he'd worked with Thursday - _for_ him, still in uniform then - had been a string of complaints from local girls about a man who got violent when they wouldn't put out. Thursday thought it was all the same bloke and he'd had Jakes make a few routine enquiries. As soon as Jakes met Ogilvie, second year at St Saviour's, he just knew. Instinct. Jakes was desperate to get him for it, but they had nothing, and soon enough the case fell off their books, lack of evidence and no new complaints.

But Jakes didn't forget. He'd followed Ogilvie a bit, now and then. Not in an official capacity - not allowed, in an official capacity – it was bad policing really, but he knew where Ogilvie drank, so there you were. One night, Jakes chased him out of a back alley and off of a woman old enough to be his mother, yelling through the blood in her mouth. She was shaking like a veteran. Ogilvie had broken her nose, and worse.

He went straight to Thursday, though of course he had to pretend he'd just stumbled across the whole thing – but if Thursday knew better, he didn't seem to care. They picked Ogilvie up that morning. Once he was in custody, plenty of other girls came forward, and that was that - court, sent down from college, the works.

“Man of the hour,” Thursday said that evening, handing Jakes a pint. It was the best day of his life.

He looked out for Jakes after that. Thursday. Not loads, but enough. Until Morse turned up.

Jakes has let go of all that now, obviously, learned to stop feeling so Second Son about the whole thing - but it took a while, longer than he'd have liked to admit, and in some deep, ashamed part of him, he still thinks it would have been nice to be somebody’s first choice for once.

After everything, how ridiculous that all he can manage for a bullet in Thursday’s lung is 'get well soon'. It’s not enough. But it’s hard to imagine what would be.

+

That Friday night, Jakes takes a bus straight from work to the centre of town. It’s late in the year and bitterly cold, but he gets off a stop early, fancies the walk. Once he’s settled at the bar of the Lamb and Flag, he sinks one, two, three pints in quick succession, no dinner, and gets into conversation with the bloke sitting next to him.

Jonathan’s well-dressed, well-spoken, but a few years younger than Jakes and hangs on his every word. He wants to go out somewhere, meet a few student girls. Jakes says, “Come with me if you like, I know a few places.”

Jonathan grins. “First round on me, then,” he says.

They get their coats and walk down to the Assembly Rooms on Cornmarket. It’s still early, only half eight, and the queue’s not too long. They chat while they’re waiting. Jakes doesn’t feel much like talking, but he manages to keep up a steady stream of questions so as not to look rude. Jonathan says it’s his first time in Oxford, bit of a punt (har har), he’s staying at a hostel that night, down from Reading where he works in menswear. He was bored, had a bit of ready cash, fancied an adventure.

Jonathan’s chatty and confident, good-looking – great company for a night like this - but he has some quality of watching, observing everything, that reminds Jakes of somebody. Just before they go into the club, he realises that it’s Morse. Jakes feels something, pushes it down, slaps a hand to Jonathan’s shoulder and steers him towards the bar.

Jonathan orders a vodka tonic with a twist of lemon, then points to Jakes, inviting him to suggest something. “Same,” says Jakes, feeling a bit wired already. Did he miss lunch, too? Jonathan grins at him and Jakes grins back.

“Yeah. It's good here,” says Jonathan.

They stand at the side for a bit, watching, then Jonathan nudges Jakes’s shoulder with his own, gesturing towards two girls, both blondes, one lighter and one darker. He raises his eyebrows and Jakes shrugs. Jonathan goes over, comes back with them, then goes to the bar to get all four of them a drink.

The women are sisters. The one with the lighter hair goes to the bar, to help Jonathan carry, and Jakes is left with the other girl. Her name’s Linda, and she moves with a wide-hipped confidence that Jakes finds compelling. They talk a little. She works in town, at a café. Jakes nods and nods and puts a hand on the small of her back, leaning in to catch what she’s saying. The Assembly’s filling up now, he can feel sweat on the back of his neck.

Jonathan comes back, the other sister hanging off his arm, laughing at something. Jakes wonders what’s so funny. Jonathan hands the drinks round and Jakes drinks his, fast, fast enough that the room begins to feel unfixed, like his vision won’t follow at the right speed when he turns his head. He needs a fixed point in the room. He picks Linda.

“Fancy a dance?” he says, mouth at her ear. She nods.

They leave Jonathan and his girl behind and walk out onto the floor, under the lights. Linda dances with the gravitational inevitability of a drink being poured. Jakes holds her hips, fingertips pressing through the nylon of her dress, and she rests her arms on his shoulders, flicking her hair and her tits and her hips in time to the music. He watches the lights on her wide, likeable face, wondering if he’ll be too drunk to get it up later, but when she moves against him, he can feel himself starting to get hard already.

Jakes leans in, kisses the edge of her mouth, rather chastely. Linda smiles at him. He leans in again, to kiss her properly, but she feels tense. He slides his hands further down her back and then she shakes her head, pulls away.

“Sorry,” she says in his ear, barely audible over the music. “There's - somebody.”

Jakes nods, lets go. She looks guilty, but Jakes doesn’t feel annoyed or anything, and when she says, “We can carry on dancing when I’ve powdered my nose?” he nods again.

Alone and half-hard on the dance floor, Jakes feels like maybe, despite that - and he honestly doesn’t mind, really - but maybe it’s time to go home. He feels weird, wired, out of step. A foot away, he can see Jonathan dancing with the other sister, she’s looking up at him with sparkly eyes. Fair enough, Jonathan’s attractive, as these things go. Tall, dark-eyed, elegant confidence, aquiline nose, and something – something -

Just as Jakes is thinking this, Jonathan looks up at him over the girl's shoulder, smiles. Jakes wonders what time it is (late, judging by the size of this crowd), decides he was right, he just needs food and bed. He holds a hand up, a half-wave, and turns away from Jonathan, towards the exit.

It takes him a while to fight his way through the people and he feels light-headed by the time he’s out in the street. Jakes heads left, away from the crowds and the Assembly queue, towards a little place he knows that stays open late, where he can get a bag of chips before he heads for home. The cold air is settling his stomach but making him feel less steady on his feet, like he has to really concentrate on where he’s walking. Then he realises someone’s calling his name.

Jakes turns and sees Jonathan. He laughs, not immediately understanding, but says nothing, and Jonathan catches up with him, not speaking either. They look at each other. Then Jonathan reaches out to brush a knuckle against Jakes's hipbone, rest a hand on his waist, inside his coat. Jakes nods.

“All right,” he says, voice low.

They go back to his.

By the time they’re through the front door, all his anxiety’s dissolved: Jonathan’s confident, more experienced perhaps, kisses him breathless against his kitchen table and then sucks him off until Jakes feels his head might burst, whining low under his breath like an animal. He hadn't realised how badly he needed it.

  
After they've both come, Jonathan leans over to where Jakes is spread out on his bed – they made it there, eventually – and kisses the side of his mouth. “I don't stay the night places,” he says. “Hope you don't mind.”

After the week he's had, in a way, he could've fancied the company, but Jakes smiles enigmatically and says of course not, that’s fine. Jonathan gets dressed and looks back from the doorway, tall and slender and watchful, and Jakes says, “Come here.” Jonathan comes back, sits down on Jakes’s bed half smiling, and Jakes kisses him slowly, ponderously, letting himself enjoy the closeness for a moment now that it’s nearly over.

Jonathan pulls away and shakes his head, laughing softly. “You’re hard to read, Pete. I felt like I was taking a pretty nuts chance back there.”

“I started talking to you,” says Jakes.

“Yeah, about girls.”

They both laugh. Jakes thinks about Linda’s wide hips, heavy breasts, wonders if he’d be here now if she hadn’t had a boyfriend. With drunken clarity, he wishes, for a moment, that he wasn’t such a mystery to himself.

“Well, I’m glad you took the chance,” he says.

Jonathan nods. “Me too.”

He lets himself out. Jakes lies where Jonathan left him, sweat cooling on his arms, in his hair. For a moment, he toys with the idea of getting up to make food, a glass of water, another drink. Then he drops into a heavy, booze-fuelled sleep.

For a long time it’s dreamless and deep, but just before dawn he wakes up cold and crawls under the duvet. His head’s pounding, and for a while he lies there feeling tense and sick, a perfect cocktail of drink and shame and hunger and who-might-have-seen. Then when he drops back off, he dreams of Inspector Thursday: he’s back at his desk, but wearing pyjamas, looking old and tired. Jakes goes to tell him that he ought to go home, sleep it off, and Thursday starts shouting.

"Why can't you just be kind to the girl?" he’s saying. "You could've burned all her hair off."

+

Thursday looks unnatural in his hospital bed, like something cooped up. He puts Jakes in mind of circuses he saw as a kid, or else photos of circuses, chained-up dancing bears in little hats. Thursday looks like that: thin, sunken, de-fanged. Very pale.

“Just wanted to see how you’re doing, Sir. If that’s all right.”

“Course,” says Thursday. His voice is a rasp. “Come in, sit down.”

There’s a small plastic chair by the bed. The bedside table is full of cards, photos, bits and pieces; Jakes imagines Thursday’s wife bringing them from home, to brighten the place up a bit and for the briefest moment there’s a flicker of something (who’d brighten his hospital room up if he got shot on the job?), but Jakes ignores it.

“Anywhere to put these?” he asks. Grapes seemed too much like a joke so in the end he brought flowers. He holds them up. They look limp in his hand. “Be all right in a bit of water.”

“Very cheerful. Here.”

Thursday hands Jakes a tumbler, which he fills from a jug in the corner, plonks the flowers in. “Windowsill?”

“Go on then. Weather’s not much cop anyway.”

Jakes leaves them there, peering out for a moment at the street below, grey and empty. Landscapes without people in them always look so lifeless. Still, 4pm on a Tuesday and already dark out, what did he expect? Everyone’s at home or at work.

“Dark, isn’t it?” he says.

“Shortest day.”

“Oh. Course.” Jakes had forgotten. They’re nearer Christmas than he realised – he’s lost track of the days. “Hey, private room though. You must have friends in high places.”

“Well,” Thursday begins, perhaps a little awkwardly, but then the door opens and Mr Bright walks in, plastic cup in each hand.

“Hot chocolate,” he says, with the air of a man who’s not been out of a room long and expects to find it just as he left it. He looks embarrassed when he sees Jakes.

“Sir,” says Jakes, by way of a greeting.

Bright nods back. “Sorry Thursday,” he says. “Wasn’t aware you had other visitors.”

“Nor was I,” says Thursday, but he’s smiling. “Give us five minutes will you, Sir?”

“Of course,” says Bright. He puts one and then, after a moment’s hesitation, both cups down on the table by Thursday’s bed, and backs out of the room with half a wave.

“Fancy that,” says Jakes, genuinely surprised.

“He’s been very good. Here when I woke up, in every day since. Think he feels – not guilty, but…”

“Responsible.”

“Just that he let us down a bit, maybe.”

Jakes nods. He’s relieved, actually. That Bright’s here and not – hobnobbing. Toasting glasses with whoever covered all this up. Like he’s picked a side, and it’s theirs.

“Listen,” Thursday’s voice is getting raspier, breath shallow from the effort of talking. “Morse told me – about--”

“Ah,” Jakes interrupts.

In the days since everything came crashing down around them, Jakes has waited, barely sleeping nights, to see if anyone else would crawl out of the woodwork who’d done their homework, made the link between him and Blenheim. Ever since Morse started digging around it had just been a matter of time, of course: Jakes has seen him scrape out soul after soul, digging people’s secrets out of them like he was using a corer on an apple, it was just his turn. And when Morse said it, _Little Pete_ (horrible inevitability, unforgivable gentleness), Jakes had thought that in a way, he’d rather it had been anyone else - but of course it wouldn’t be. Could never have been.

He was just starting to feel sure nobody else knew. He’s not surprised Morse told Thursday, but even so, he wonders when, how, what tone. Funny coincidence? Pity? He doesn’t know what would be worst.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” says Thursday. “Unless you’d like to.”

“No,” says Jakes. His voice is tight, almost as small as Thursday’s, but Thursday has a bullet in his chest for an excuse, so. “Thank you,” he manages. “Rather hear how you’re doing, if it’s all the same to you sir.”

Thursday makes a sound, some approximation of a laugh, and then starts coughing. It sounds like he is literally on the verge of death. Jakes gets him a glass of water, waits until the coughing subsides. Thursday says, “Actually, tell the truth, I’m feeling much better, despite how it, ah, sounds.”

What a pair. Jakes is wondering what he should say to that, what there is to say, when Thursday fixes him with a serious look and says, “Anyway, how’s Morse?”

Jakes looks away. He’s ready to make some excuse, but here in this small, hot room, seeing Thursday like this, it feels absurd not to have been to visit. What’s he scared of? That it’ll be a bit awkward because they’re not really mates? Thursday’s laughing through a bullet in the lung, or trying to – he’s not scared of anything. Jakes wants to be like him.

“Going in a couple of days,” he says. “I’ll let you know.”

“Good,” says Thursday. “That’s good.”

+

Visiting hours are Saturday afternoons as a rule, and as luck would have it, the next Saturday is Christmas Eve, so that’s when Jakes goes. For some reason it doesn’t occur to him to drive; like he’s playing a part in a film, he gets the train and then the crowded bus from the station with all the other visitors, a special, door to door. Through the steamed-up windows, Jakes can see snatches of flat Oxfordshire countryside. He’s the only fully-grown man on the bus, all the rest are women and kids, harried wives in threadbare coats with grizzly babies under their arms, whole thing turns his stomach. He hopes none of them can tell what he does for a living.

He’s done this drive plenty of times, of course, recognises the country round here. He’s beginning to wonder what’s possessed him – to travel like this, to go at all, to be doing this.

They’ve got Morse in one of those old Victorian prisons: stern and imposing, designed as much for its effect on the landscape as the people inside. When they step off the bus, Jakes sees chicken wire netted around the tops of the fences, like in war films; for a moment, he pictures Morse scrabbling up the wall, spotlight crawling across the ground after him. It’s an absurd image, but no more absurd, in some ways, than his being here at all.

The families are led through a visitors’ entrance, not quite as imposing as the main one, but all the same, the guards treat every one of them like a potential suspect. One guard’s so keen to go through Jakes’s pockets that Jakes nearly shows his badge, but then the bloke climbs down from it, too busy, and waves them all through.

Jakes has been to plenty of prisons before but never like this, never with the other visitors, and it’s strange to think that all his life’s achievements so far have involved sticking other people in places like this. Not that they haven’t deserved it, the ones he’s put away – but still. It doesn’t feel very honourable, suddenly, surrounded by kids waiting to see their dad one last time before Christmas.

They traipse into the visiting room. It’s wide, sparsely lit, full of little tables with uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs either side; a string of sickly-looking red tinsel on the far wall is the only concession to the season. It’s impossible to imagine the bright lights of the shops on the High in here. Jakes takes a seat at one of the tables and waits.

The air hums with tension. All of them with their eyes on the same door. Somewhere, a baby starts crying, and then another, like they’re communicating with each other.

Then the far door slams open and men begin to file in, matching uniforms, wildly variant in every other respect. Jakes spots him instantly: smaller, skinnier than most of the others. Morse reaches him and stops dead, mouth all but hanging open.

“You,” he says.

“Wotcher,” Jakes replies, for lack of anything else to say. They look at each other for a moment, Morse clearly trying to adjust his features into something more polite, some kind of welcome. “Sit down, will you?”

Morse sits, chair scraping the floor. “Sorry,” he manages. “They just said a visitor, they didn’t say who.”

“That’s all right.”

They take each other in. Everything about Morse is exactly the same and completely different: his face is thinner than Jakes has ever seen it, pale blue eyes looking out at him from grey skin, but with the same searching intensity they’ve always had.

“ _Are_ you all right?” Jakes repeats, sotto voce.

Morse wets his lips, nods slowly. “Think so,” he says. “Surviving.”

“Good. Keep it that way.” He thinks of Strange, the letter he did or didn’t send, adds, “Listen, things move slow this time of year, yeah? Mr Bright’s working on it. We’ll have you out soon as.”

Morse nods slowly. It’s hard to tell whether he believes this or not. “Listen,” he says. “Have you… Is Inspector Thursday…”

Whatever he’s trying to get out, he can’t quite manage it. For a moment Jakes feels quite the go-between, nearly makes some flip remark, but then it occurs to him to wonder who’s been in touch, if anyone’s bothered to let Morse know Mrs Thursday isn’t keeping any gravesides tidy this Christmas.

“Saw him a couple of days back. He’s looked better, but he’ll mend. Back at work in no time.”

Morse is so still, breathing so slowly, that for a moment it looks as though he hasn’t heard, but then he blinks a few times, fast, and Jakes realises his eyes are wet. He looks away. At the next table, a huge great man is holding hands with what can only be his mother.

“Sorry,” says Morse.

Jakes shakes his head, eyes averted as if Morse has done something necessary but private, like removing his clothes at the doctor’s. “Nobody told you?”

Morse shakes his head. “I thought I’d – I thought I might have --”

“No, no,” Jakes waves a hand. “Take more than a bullet, that. Tough as old boots.”

“Thank you.”

Some tension in Morse’s body has gone, he seems to have gained an inch in height and sagged forwards all at the same time. Jakes feels a funny urge to slide his palm across the table, cover Morse’s hand with his own - no doubt because that’s what everyone else in here is doing. His fingers twitch slightly on the tabletop. He says, “Ah, you’re all right.”

“No, I mean it,” Morse looks up at him, and then his thin, pale hand is around Jakes’s wrist, gripping hard. “Thank you. For coming.”

Jakes shakes his head, doesn’t pull away. “Not much of a Christmas,” he says weakly. “Should’ve brought you something. Didn’t know what they’d let me bring.”

Morse snorts derisively. “Not much, I wouldn’t think.” He immediately looks much more like himself. He takes his hand away. As soon as it’s gone, Jakes can’t tell if it was ever there.

+

Weeks pass. A quiet, solitary Christmas. Jakes goes back to the station on Boxing Day – this time of year, he prefers to keep busy – and by the 27th, Strange is in too. When Jakes asks him if he had a good one, Strange shrugs like he can’t really imagine what a _good one_ is. Married to the job, all of them. They pass a companionable day together in the half-empty building, but Jakes doesn’t tell him anything about going in to see Morse – it would seem odd, like if he was gonna go they should’ve gone together. Well, fair enough. He’s not really sure why he kept it quiet.

For New Year’s Eve, he goes out drinking, couple of friends he was on the beat with when he first joined up, they’re nice enough. He chats up a few pretty girls. No action - but one, American girl, a student, gives him her number. She’s nice looking. He promises to call her, wonders if he will, and then that’s it: midnight, bells, cheering. January. A fresh start. Another one bites the dust.

He thinks of Morse often in those quiet days. Not that either of them go in for all those signs and symbols, but still, it must feel ominous to start a new year in that place, no prospect of freedom. Christmas with not even one friendly face for comfort. Not that Jakes’s Christmas was up to much, but: telly, a walk, clear blue skies – doing what he wanted when he wanted to – it’s not nothing. He remembers well enough how small other people can make the world for you, if they have a mind to.

He thinks about sending a card, that he hopes Morse is keeping well, but for some reason he feels scared to. Like having too much to do with him will somehow make it obvious what Morse is, like there’s no other way they could know each other, like there’s nothing else he could be than a copper. It’s stupid, superstitious in a way (another portent, what’s he turning into?), but then he’d half-expected to see Morse beaten to a pulp when he went in.

Jakes has no idea, of course, whether anyone else in there knows what Morse is. But from the looks of him - skinny, pissed off, physically basically fine - Jakes would guess they haven’t. He hopes it stays that way.

+

A couple of weeks into January, he goes back.

Now he really does feel out of his mind. Thursday’s out of hospital and resting up at home, no more visiting hours there, and Jakes has already been in to tell him Morse was all right, shaken up, not looking any worse than you’d expect. He wondered if that was true while he was saying it and decided it probably was. Anyway, he has no reason to go again, and does it anyway.

He drives this time. Fuck the bus, he doesn’t need to turn up with all the prison-widows like he and Morse are family or something. He arrives just in time to join the back of the queue. Today, they’re kept waiting in the sparse little visiting room for nearly twenty minutes, but it feels longer. Jakes keeps an eye on the clock on the far wall and wishes he’d brought a paper. He wonders if there’s a reason, or the reason is just control. He remembers these sorts of tricks from other institutions, the point of which is always to remind you of the same thing: they can give and they can take away.

Eventually the door swings open and in they all traipse.

“Hello,” says Morse, sitting down opposite. He doesn’t look as surprised as last time. He even looks a little less unwell, though he could clearly do with a decent lunch.

“Happy new year,” says Jakes.

It’s the right tone, somehow: Morse snorts, derisive, himself.

“Yeah,” he says. “Same to you.”

“They give you anything to toast with?”

“Have you seen this place?”

“And you’re not on the distribution lists for moonshine or nothing?”

Morse laughs. Somehow this very arch tone works, a little piece of normal, of the outside world - not that it’s normal for them, or not quite. Still. They grin at each other.

“Not on anyone’s Christmas card list either,” says Morse, then drops the tone. “How about you? You well?”

Jakes shrugs. “Tired. Busy without the two of you. Be glad to have you back, soon as – soon as possible.” He stops himself using the word _brass_ just in time. _Soon as brass can swing it._ Is brass even a police word? Jakes isn’t sure – he’s never been much but a copper. Clearly both of them are smart enough not to say anything that could land Morse in it, should they be overheard by the wrong person, but it makes Jakes paranoid, listening to himself. Must be like that every moment in here.

And anyway, he _wants_ to talk about work, wants to bring the world in with him. He has a weird feeling like he wants to remind Morse who he is - who he really is, not just stuck in here. It’s hard to do that without work. Harder than it would be with any of the others, even.

“Ah,” says Morse, and looks away, evasive.

That’s the moment Jakes realises he might not come back.

After the initial shock of it, he thinks: well, obviously. How do you go back knowing this can happen? How do you work beside those men every day and wonder how deep it all went? How deep it goes. It’s a question Jakes asks himself every day.

“Right,” he says slowly. “Well. I’d probably feel the same in your place.”

A silence spins out between them and for a moment it is huge, a gulf, the gap between freedom and imprisonment, between being able to walk out of a room and not. Jakes feels immediately that he has to stop that happening, or Morse will travel so far away, he might never be able to get back. He casts around for something, anything to say, ends up with, “So, they let you watch Christmas telly in here or what?”

Morse laughs. “Yeah, actually,” he says.  


+

Jakes sits in his car and chain-smokes three fags, shaking a little less with every one, until he’s steady-handed enough to drive home. It’s the smell of the place that gets him: boiled vegetables, sweat, bleach, institutional smells, like any school or hospital, but worse - the sweat smells animal, like fear. He still believes Morse will get free, that Bright will sort it, but he also knows now that the damage has been done. If Morse does come back, he won’t be the same copper. If. If. Who knows. But Jakes does - he does know. He knows that things like this can change a man, bend a personality til it breaks.

When he gets home, he pours himself a drink, turns the telly on – he wants something cheerful to keep the cold out, but there’s nothing good on, and images from the day keep floating up, burned into his brain. Barbed wire on the fence, baby in its mother’s arms, Morse’s thin wrists and the intensity of his expression, like he was trying to communicate telepathically. Jakes feels cooped up and restless. He needs to get out into town, meet someone, blow off some steam. He needs to go out.

Decision made, he feels better already, and the second drink he pours himself is more generous. He’ll need to change of course, can’t go anywhere with that prison-smell on him, on his clothes. He strips, showers, turns the radio up high. Just because Morse is stuck in there doesn’t mean he is: he’s free and he should make the most of it. Rubbing his hair with a towel, Jakes opens his wardrobe and takes out the smart trousers he keeps for best. A scrap of paper falls out and flutters to the floor.

Jakes bends down to pick it up, trying to remember when he last wore these. New Year’s Eve, probably. The paper has a phone number on it, and a name: Hope. Fuck. He’d totally forgotten. Been weeks now, it’s a bit late really, but what the hell, only live once don’t you?

Jakes calls her.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice curling against his ear like smoke in the air, like something from another world entirely. “Yeah, of course I remember you.”

+

By the third visit, Jakes has stopped wondering what he’s doing and surrendered to whatever force is pulling him here - loyalty to Thursday, some sense of tribalism or community or affection, whatever it is, who cares, he’s back. He waits in the car park til he’s nearly late: it’s a bright day, he smokes in the sunshine with his sleeves pushed up, trying to feel the sun on the backs of his hands, and then when the last of the queue is disappearing through the prison gates, he goes in.

He spots the black eye as soon as Morse sits down. Obviously, the bottom drops out of his stomach. If someone’s found out, if someone knows, they’ll eat him alive.

“Oh my God,” he says.

“What?” says Morse, then, “Oh--"

“Is this--” Jakes starts, but Morse cuts him off.

“No,” he says quickly, voice low, almost amused. “Talked back to the wrong person. I was being stupid, not-- It’s nothing sinister.”

There’s something in Morse’s face like he wants them to laugh about it, but Jakes is too shaken to see the funny side. He reaches out a hand. Morse stills, and lets him, Jakes’s fingertips at his jaw turning his face away enough for Jakes to take a proper look. _Lets him_ is exactly the phrase, this is what it must be like trying to saddle a nervous horse. Morse watches from this new angle, silent and unreadable, but Jakes ignores him, concentrates: the bruise is fading, healing, not fresh. It’s only been a week since he came in last, Morse must have got it the same day. Nothing since.

“Okay?” says Morse, but his voice is soft, the laughter gone out of it now. Jakes takes his hand away.

“Okay,” he says. “Sorry.”

Morse shakes his head. He looks – something. Jakes wishes he knew what.

+

On their second date, she wears her hair up on top of her head. It’s sort of thick and healthy-looking, like in magazines, like American girls on telly. He wonders what they’ve got in the water over there that makes girls look like that. Back at his later that night, she lets it down slowly, pin-by-pin, laughing. She isn’t shy. He likes that. He likes that she’s not shy.

The next morning, they wake up late and Hope has to rush for a meeting with her doctoral advisor. She’s trying to brush her hair and put on her lipstick up at the same time.

“Want a hand?” Jakes asks, and at first she laughs at him - but then she lets him help, sat on the bed behind her, brushing her hair with soft, gentle strokes. She powders her nose while he does it.

“Good to have my hands free,” she says, laughing again. Has she stopped since he met her? But Jakes sits quiet: it feels good to do something peaceful and deliberate with another person, for them. It feels good to brush Hope’s hair for her. When she’s gone, his sheets smell of her perfume.

+

Because they can’t talk about work, they end up talking about strange things, books and telly and where Morse grew up. Jakes asks the questions and Morse answers them. There’s no emotional colour in any of it – for instance, when they talk about Morse’s hometown he learns not one thing about his parents, siblings, if there are any, if any of them are still alive, it’s all geography – but still, it’s interesting. It’s interesting just to ask questions, it never felt allowed before somehow.

  
“I’m talking too much,” says Morse at one point.

“Why?” says Jakes, “We’re not on a date,” and wishes he hadn’t. Morse laughs, but his own cheeks feel hot, like he’s said given something away.

“Still, tell me how you are. How are,” and here Morse faulters, an obvious swerve to avoid their common ground, pivoting awkwardly to, “…things?”

Jakes nods. He thinks of the enquiry he spoke at last Wednesday, the one that should finish in the middle of next week, the one Bright’s pushed through to get Morse out of here – but he can’t talk about it in this room, and wouldn’t even if he could, too scared to give false assurances before they really know anything. Then he thinks of Hope. That ungainly, open-mouthed laugh he finds so appealing. She doesn’t want a boyfriend and that suits him, he’s enjoying whatever it is they’re doing, maybe too much, some mornings he wakes up bursting with it. He should want to talk about her, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t.

“Oh nothing,” he says. “You know me. Hey, I’ve brought you a present.” He takes a book of crosswords from his bag, puts it on the table. “Thought you must be bored.”

“Very,” says Morse. It’s only a Readers Digest one but he looks sort of touched.

“Shall we do one now?” Jakes taps the book. Morse laughs at him, but they do it anyway.

It’s soon obvious that they’re too easy, but it’s companionable enough.

Later, Morse says, “I don’t suppose you’d mind saving me the cryptics out of the paper? You could bring them in next time – if that wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

Jakes notices the ‘next time’, chooses not to think about it; four visits and counting, it’s a commitment, why shouldn’t Morse assume he’s coming back? He shrugs. “Sure,” he says.

+

“If you could all gather round,” says Bright, not quite loud enough, in the awkward voice he uses for public address, “I have some good news.”

Jakes already knows what it must be: the enquiry dragged on, delayed, but everyone knows it’s finished now and they’ve all been waiting. When Bright tells them Morse is free, everyone claps and shakes one other’s hands and then, embarrassed by the display of emotion, scatters across the building. Jakes goes down the back staircase and out to a bit of scrubland where he sometimes gets some peace. He sits on the bench there, chain-smoking, shivering but trying to ignore it.

Morse is free, and all the strangeness of the last few months is over. Soon he’ll come back – either to work, or to say he’s leaving if he’s leaving, but either way, he’ll be here soon and then – what?

Then they’ll be out in the world together, as whatever they are now. Friends, or. Jakes shakes his head, rubbing a hand across his eyes. It’s one of those early February days where the sun has never really come up, freezing, his knuckles are going white. Friends, or not-quite-friends, but something. It’s been weird; it’s been a weird few months. But now Morse is free and they can go for a pint and things can go back to normal. Everything will just be normal.

But he doesn’t come back.

The next day it’s the same, no Morse, and the day after that. Jakes can feel a waiting in his chest, can feel that they’re all still waiting. The day after that. The day after that. He drifts past the order and neatness of Morse’s desk with increasing brazenness, looking at the small, precise handwriting curled across every piece of paper. Perhaps if he sits down, messes with the order of things, Morse will appear, just at that moment, the old expression on his face: disgust, irritation, impatience. God, why does Jakes even want him back?

But he does, despite himself. He does want him back. And not just because it’s the way of things and not just because he wants it all how it was before, no bullet in Thursday’s lung and nobody knowing – nobody knowing about him. It isn’t just that.

All those hours together. Talking and talking and never saying anything that really mattered.

There was a moment, late in Jakes’s first visit, when Morse said, “Listen – Peter.” His voice was so quiet, and hearing his first name from Morse was so strange, Jakes knew immediately what was coming. He shook his head: no. Refused to talk about it. And Morse nodded, and that was that, they never did. Jakes doesn’t want Morse to come back and talk to him about Blenheim, but he wants – he wants them to not talk about it.

For a while, Morse knowing the worst thing that’d ever happened to Jakes felt a bit like Morse having got one over on him – for whatever reason, rivalry, competitiveness, he was sure he’d have picked anyone, anyone else to know. But since then, he’s remembered sometimes, when they were sat together – he’s remembered that Morse knows, and looks at him no differently, and felt relief like warmth in all his fingertips.

Jakes wants it to sit between them, and to never talk about it. He wants Morse to look at him and know and not feel sorry for him, just know, and understand, and for it to live there, a part of him he doesn’t need to hide. He wants to know that whatever delicate quiet they made in that place can survive out here in the world. He wants Morse to touch him again. He wants to know he didn’t imagine it.

That Friday night, Jakes drinks at his desk until the ball of anxiety in his stomach is gone, and when he leaves the office he turns right instead of left, decision made at the moment of taking the step. He walks to Morse’s, dropped him there once, he remembers the road, only he can’t quite recall which building it was. He walks up and down the street a few times until he thinks he’s got it right, it’s number 33 or the one next door, a few more laps, thinking, and then a bloke leans out of some upper window and says, “Clear off will you mate? Maybe she don’t wanna talk to you.”

Jakes stands there, dumb, for a moment. Maybe she don’t wanna talk to you. He nods. He goes home.

+

“I’m really sorry,” he says. “There’s loads going on at work at the moment, my head’s all over the place.”

“It’s fine,” says Hope.

“It’s late to cancel, and it’s a Friday night, so you could’ve made other plans, and I know it’s – not – okay. You deserve better.”

“Peter,” she says, suddenly laughing. “It was just a date.”

He likes the way she says his name, _Pe-der,_ ‘d’ for ‘t’, that accent. Like his name belongs to somebody else. It makes him want to be that person.

“I know,” he says. “But I like you.”

“I like you too. I have too much work at the moment anyway. Call me in a few weeks, okay?”

Jakes nods, though she can’t see it over the phone. “Okay.”

+

Weeks pass and Jakes doesn’t see many people, except round the station. He tries to cut down on his drinking, does well except for one huge and accidental bender at the end of the month; Hope’s phone rings out for a long time but she doesn’t answer. He’s relieved til he realises that means she’s out somewhere. Still, she said she didn’t want a boyfriend: she’s always been honest with him, he knows where he is with her, and that’s worth a lot. He’s only now beginning to realise how much.

Winter turns into spring. The little pile of cryptic crosswords yellows on his desk, seven or eight squares of paper that he’s almost stopped noticing, he’d cut them out diligently every day until Bright broke the news. One day Strange notices them, asks what they are. Jakes says he doesn’t know. They’re not his.

There’s something so exposing about them: they look so neat, so carefully snipped and sincere. He throws them away.

+

And then there he is, exactly where Jakes would expect to find him – sat on the ground in bright sunshine, two foot away from a corpse. Like he was never anywhere else.

“All right?” says Jakes, static in his ears. Nothing. “Morse?”

Now he looks up: red hangover-eyes, rumpled clothes, a distance in his expression that makes him seem as far away as – well, as he’s been for the last six weeks. Knew the dead man apparently, friend of his. Their eyes meet for a moment, and Morse nods, stands. Whatever Jakes had been waiting for – some moment, something – whatever he might have hoped for, it doesn’t come.

Morse goes inside when he is told to, and outside when he is told to. He talks about the case, and the dead man, like he and Jakes have only ever been colleagues. After all, why shouldn’t he? This is their normal; this is the normal Jakes wanted back. What else did he expect?

And if there was a time a few weeks ago when he could have asked Morse how long he’d known Bixby and how they met and could have told him he was sorry for his loss, well, that time was the exception, not the rule.

Thursday still has a bullet in his lung and a cough like he might keel over any second. This is the closest to they can get to the past, and it’s nowhere near. Jakes makes his excuses, goes without them being alone together. That night he dreams about the fire again: the little girl’s pigtail, the smell of burning, the tingling in his fingers.

Normal. Everything is as it should be.

+

The next week, late one night, there’s a knock at Jakes’s door. For a moment he thinks it might be Hope, maybe she’s got locked out at her place (he likes the thought of being the person she would come to if that happened), but when he opens the door, Morse is out on the step, looking small in an over-large mac, dark-pupiled, tense.

“Sorry,” he says. “I know it’s late.”

Jakes shakes his head and moves aside. “Come in. Drink?”

“Please. Whatever you’ve got.”

Jakes goes to the drinks cabinet to fix them both a whisky while Morse hovers in the middle of the living room, coat still on, looking about him. Not a natural house-guest. They’ve barely seen each other since he came back, Jakes has stayed out of the way, made excuses, couldn’t help himself. He presses the tumbler into Morse’s hand and gestures to a chair, but Morse shakes his head, doesn’t want to sit down.

Jakes nods. He stays standing too. After a moment, he lights up; needs something to do with his hands. How absurd it is for both of them to just stand here in his living room, why won’t Morse just sit down and make it all less difficult?

“Why did you keep coming?” Morse asks abruptly. He’s staring at a fixed point near the electric fireplace. “You know you were my only visitor?”

Jakes is very still. “I didn’t know that,” he says slowly, though he supposes if he’d thought about it properly, he could have guessed. Even if Morse does have family somewhere, he probably wouldn’t have told them where he was. Wouldn’t tell anyone anything if he could get away with it.

“Well, you were. For weeks it was just blank walls and boiled vegetables and – and – you.”

Jakes nods slowly, even though he knows Morse isn’t looking at him. “Has something happened?” he asks, gentle as he can manage.

Morse laughs weakly. “Take your pick.”

“I meant something – specific.”

Morse shrugs. He still won’t meet Jakes’s eyes. He sips his whisky, says, through gritted teeth, “Funeral today.”

“Course. Sorry about your friend.”

“I barely knew him.”

“But you liked him.”

“I – yes. I liked him.”

Jakes had wondered. Two glasses at the crime scene, the two of them alone in that huge house – how little time they’d known each other and how much Morse seemed to know – too much intimacy and not enough of a reason for it, and Morse is hardly easy to get close to. Jakes had wondered, and tried not to wonder, and he’s still not sure.

“I think you need rest,” he says slowly. “An early night.”

“No, you don’t.”

Finally Morse meets his eyes. There’s something in them Jakes knows and understands, something that calls to him. “I--” he starts, but there’s nothing to say. He takes a step backward, not really away but away, and Morse follows, one step, two, Jakes’s back against the doorframe and Morse presses against him with the whole of his body, so close that Jakes can almost feel his heart beating in his chest.

Morse’s face is full of the obvious question: is this lunatic? Are you going to hit me? Jakes can’t bear it anymore, they’re both taking a risk but Morse is here, like this, he knows what it means. He leans forward and presses their mouths together. Morse’s fingertips dig into his hip.

Jakes was never sure if he was right about this one. If he could admit to himself that he’d pictured this, he’d have to say he pictured it as something very different: intense, feverish, a quick, short-lived, nameless thing, over before it had really begun. There’s something so slow and inquisitive about this kiss. It’s too much.

Jakes makes himself push Morse away, holding his shoulders in his palms, gentle, not wanting to. “How much have you had to drink?” he asks.

Morse rolls his eyes and pushes the glass he’s still holding into Jakes’s hand. “Catch me up if you’re so worried about it,” he says, hint of the old disdain. Something about that motion is so smooth that it’s clear he can’t, after all, be that drunk - but Jakes drains the glass anyway, for something to do, and holds Morse’s gaze while he does it. Morse nods, once.

“You know,” says Jakes. “We don’t have to fuck just because no-one else visited you in prison.” He’s trying for a joke, but it doesn’t work: the air is thick with meaning and none of it is funny.

“But you want to?”

“Yes,” Jakes says slowly. He’s never talked about it like this before, barely with women, certainly not with men, which has always been a rare thing, unspoken, a last resort. “Yes,” he says again, the word coming from somewhere deep in his chest. “I want to.”

“Good,” says Morse.

Now it feels more like Jakes expected. Morse knocks the empty glass from his hand, dull thud as it hits the carpet, and they kiss again, open-mouthed and gasping. Jakes can feel every inch of Morse’s body pressed against his own and his tongue in his mouth and he feels hysterical but it doesn’t matter, he wants it too much to care. Morse palms his cock through his trousers and Jakes hisses through his teeth.

Now it’s them, actually them: Jakes feels a not unfamiliar urge to push back, teach this little shit a lesson, and suddenly he can feel the whisky in his blood as he walks Morse back a step, drags them both down onto the floor and straddles him. Morse is laughing with Jakes’s ugly carpet behind his head, and Jakes doesn’t want to be laughed at, not now, so he bites him, just softly, at the hip, hearing the gasp, wet breath in both their mouths but the sound of it dulled by the buzz of panic and then he gets Morse in his mouth and thinks of nothing until he feels a hand at the back of his head. “Please, please,” Morse is saying, over and over, a litany, a desperate sound. And Jakes thinks: yes. He lets him come.

Later, when it’s all over, Morse lies in the crook of Jakes’s arm, hair tickling his cheek. “Must’ve been some funeral,” he says, and Morse starts laughing, and then they are both laughing, like they might never stop. They fall asleep there, on Jakes’s living room floor.

When he wakes up a few hours later, just before dawn, he is alone. He doesn’t mind. Jakes gets up, climbs into bed and instantly falls back into a dreamless sleep.

+

Jakes isn’t supposed to be at the shops at all. He’s drifting around town a few days later – he’s there to talk to a woman in the pub across the way, witness to an attempted murder, but he’s mistimed it, early, they’re not open yet. Still, he’s happy enough to drift around like this: the April sunshine is beautiful and Jakes feels – light. He feels well. Been feeling that way all week.

He’s pitched up in some posh department store, barely looking where he’s going, when he smashes the vase. He’s in a daze, not paying attention, and takes it out with his elbow. Posh one too.

“Woah there,” says the woman next to him, and catches it with both hands. Good reflexes. She looks up at him, triumphant, and it’s Hope. Of course it is. They both start laughing, surprised and delighted. It’s been a while since they’ve seen each other, he should have called and hasn’t - but Jakes feels immediately that it can be easy, he can make it easy.

“What a catch,” he says.

Hope’s flushed with pleasure, looking like a goalie who just made a game-winning save, or whatever the American is for that. Jakes takes the vase from her hands, replaces it on the shelf, and turns back to look at her, her hair, her mouth. He feels pleased to see her - simply that. It’s plenty.

“Hey,” he says. “Is it too early to go for a drink?”

Hope shakes her head. She looks suddenly very serious. “It’s never too early,” she says.


End file.
